"Just Walk Away..."

Before I begin...a quick reminder.  PFDs are coming out this fall and they will be substantially larger than they have been in recent years.  You can donate a portion of your dividend directly to Joel's Place through Pick.Click.Give.

Sunday the 31st of August is the last day to edit the amount that you would like to donate.  If you are interested, follow this link to the home page.  It is literally a few minutes and few clicks in order to invest in a great cause.  Thank you for all your support!

 

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Last fall I had the opportunity to takes some classes on nonprofit management.  I thought it would be good if I knew just a little bit about what I was supposed to be doing.  It was a challenging season for Joel's Place and I was struggling with how we were going to keep our doors open.  Every class I attended would have at least one exchange like this:
       -Instructor: "Never, under any circumstances, do ______________ because it will lead to ________."
       -Me (raising my hand): "Hypothetically...if someone were to have already done _______...and it did lead to _________...how would they recover from that?"

I learned a lot during my classes and am so grateful for the opportunity.  However my time in the fall had a couple of unexpected interactions also.  I put together a list of the foundational organizational problems that Joel's Place had, mostly concerning money (or lack thereof).  I was trying to figure out how to prioritize them and move forward.  The list included...or theoretically included:

• Cash flow.  We have a hard time meeting our payroll
• A large line debt of credit from a fundraiser-gone-wrong from several years ago
• No organizational reserves (the standard recommendation is 3-6 months worth)
• A $300,000 balloon payment due in September of 2014

There were a couple other elements to the list, but you get the point.  Each and every nonprofit professional that I spoke to said the same thing:  "Just walk away.  That is not fixable.  Go now before you are crushed by it."  This was not the strategic plan that I was looking for.

I came back to work knowing that the next couple of months would determine whether Joel's Place would turn a corner and become sustainable or whether it was time to close. 

The first eight months of this year have been focused on turning that corner.  Our summer of Free Skating was an incredible success (Thanks again Conoco Phillips and Fred Meyer!), transforming our slowest season into three months of nonstop kids and activities.  Usually we end summer in the hole between $10,000-$20,000.  At the end of August this year we will have our bills paid and have a little money in the bank.  More amazing than that, we have come up with a solution for the Balloon Payment.  Through the generosity of grants, donors and community support, we have secured a financing source that will allow us to check off many of our financial issues.  I won't bore you with amortization schedules and budgets, but here is the cliff notes version:

• Our monthly cash flow is improved by $1,000 per month, making it substantially easier to pay our staff.
• The line of credit is gone.
• We have an Operational Reserve fund that could cover one month's expenses in case of emergency
• The Balloon Payment is taken care of, replaced by affordable monthly payments.

There are papers to file and details to finish, but that is where we will be as we head into fall.  It has been a remarkable year and I am so thankful for the support and assistance that I have received, especially from our Board of Directors.  Thank you all for the ways that you have invested in Joel's Place and in the Youth of this community.  I am not sure which mountains we will climb next...the ink needs to dry here first...but I am eager to see how this amazing institution will continue to grow and develop.

I'm so Angry at the World

 My amazing wife is taking some classes in Spiritual Direction.  In the course of her studies, she has rediscovered the Enneagram.  The Enneagram is basically an ancient personality test, based off of 9 different core focus points or, depending on what tradition you are researching from, core sins.  (I apologize to all Enneagram zealots for the broad strokes I just used for that summary.)  As I have borrowed her books, I have confirmed that I am a 1.  Ones are known as the perfectionists of the Enneagram circle, marked by their excellence and easily recognizable by their anger.  Ones are able to see the world as it should be, working to bring order from chaos, and frequently our efforts are foiled or wasted by the brokenness and darkness of the world.  Our response is usually some form of anger at perfection being ruined.  I am angry all the time.  I have learned some healthy (and some not so healthy) ways to make that socially acceptable, but it is real.

One of the things that I have found over 15 years of ministry is that the sins that we most easily see in others are the ones that most prominently reside within us.  Makes sense; we know what to look for.  I mention  all this because I am continually amazed at how angry we are as a people.  We are filled with so much hurt and shock and disappointment and outrage and expectation and fear that it overflows and comes pouring out of us as anger and rage...especially across the internet.

It doesn't really matter what the subject is, although the last few weeks have provided us with some intense material: Israel, Palestine, Syria, human trafficking, Ferguson, guns, Robin Williams, oil, health care, immigration, politics, gay rights, Iraq...the list goes on and on.  You can look up the comments from the box score of a preseason football game and see people yelling at each other, venom dripping from their posts.

Some of this is simply due to the wonders of technology and the internet.  There is no consequence to trolling online; there are no valuable relationships to be damaged or reconciliation to pursue.  The internet grants us access to information across the globe; events that we would only have heard about days or weeks after the fact are now available to us in an instant.  We rarely know all the facts, but we have visceral first impressions anyway.

Some of our anger is due to the fact that we see and hear what we want to see and hear.  We accept stories and facts that support our beliefs about the world and the people within it.  We complain about the bias of the media and the stupidity of people who are highlighted in the news as we operate with a only a fraction of the information.

Anger is mostly a response to fear.  My Facebook feed shows that there is a lot to fear.  Life is volatile and out of control.  Just about everyone I know is one major tragedy away from being destitute and our hope is that if we could just fix one thing life would be stable and safe. 

• If everyone had guns, we would be safe
• If no one had guns, we would be safe
• If everyone could get married, we would be safe
• If we had smaller government, we would be safe
• If George Lucas had not made Episodes I-III, we would be safe
• If everyone would just smarten up, raise the level of debate and think like me, we would be safe

Here's the thing: this world, this country, this life are never going to be safe.  This is a fallen world filled with fallen people.  If our hope is in people or systems or movements or denominations or rhetoric we will be deeply hurt and disappointed.  If our hope is in the one true God who is big enough to tackle this world's messes and loving enough to hold a single heart in His hand...there may be a chance.

This is not a call into apathy or hiding from the world.  There are injustices and atrocities and systematic oppression that must be opposed...but they cannot be stopped by lashing out in anger.  Anger breeds mobs, not movements.

You want to make a difference?  Outstanding.  Calling someone else stupid will never do that.  Ever.  Try these instead:

• Stop trolling and start looking for ways to encourage people online.  Don't have anyone that you hang out with online that you agree with?  Find some.
• Start spending some of your time volunteering locally.  We rarely can touch the world's injustices.  We can have an impact on the injustices in our community every day.
• Start spending some of your money giving to charity.  Invest in those who are doing good work at home and around the globe.

The world is a dark place, but we need not be afraid.  We know who holds our lives in His hands, both now and forever.

Closed

So I notice that it has been a while since my last post.  I have good reasons, honestly.  A couple of weeks ago I was in Chicago with the wife and baby and our internet connection was...spotty.

 (Completely unrelated side note here.  Do you know how hard it is to find authentic, Chicago-style deep dish pizza in Chicago?  The North Side of Chicago, where we were based, had dozens of highly-rated pizza places that all served thin crust.  When I found a couple of famous deep-dish places in downtown Chicago the wait was over 2 hours.  My best deep-dish experience in the Windy City was at Uno's Airport Pizza.  It was not awesome.)

Last week I was busy setting up the Joel's Place booth at the Tanana Valley State Fair in the monsoon that we call summer 2014.  Joel's Place grew up at the Fair.  One of our first homes was at the fairgrounds and when we found a place to call our own, we picked it to be only a few blocks away from the fair.  We have had a presence during at the fair for the past 15 years.  Last year was the first year that we were actually allowed to set up a small skate park.  It was a small win, but a win nonetheless.  This year we have the same stretch of pavement as last year, but we are much busier.

We have had dozens of new youth sign waivers and ride with us for the first time.  When the sun is out, you can expect to see anywhere from 5 to 25 kids hanging out, laughing, riding, falling and generally enjoying themselves...it is just like being at Joel's Place except with more fried food.  Kelli and the staff have done a spectacular job of being welcoming to both our members and the new faces.  It has been a great success and, thanks to the Fred Meyer Foundation, we have been able to offer free riding during the fair which has served us well.  "Free" is not something that you see a lot at the fair.  I am sure this has contributed to our great attendance.

During this week of the fair, Joel's Place has been closed.  I was talking with our staff this week about the value of focus.  Last year we tried to keep Joel's Place open and run the fair site and it just stretched us too thin.  The staff were stressed and having to put in overtime; our volunteers were called in over and over; no one had much fun and kids tended to stay away from both sites.  Focus allows us to present a high quality product with an appropriate amount of support resources.  The kids win.  The staff win.  The fair wins.  The parents win.  It is tempting to think that our mission will be advanced more effectively if we are able to be more places, be open more hours, offer more programs.  In reality our mission thrives when we focus on what we do well and fades when we spread ourselves too thin.

So we are closed this week...and it is going great.  See you next week!